


Wallow

by lightningrogers



Series: West 35th [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Artist Steve, Blood, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Shock, Trauma, Violence, very mild sexual references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 01:24:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20592353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningrogers/pseuds/lightningrogers
Summary: Bucky admires from afar.





	Wallow

The song for this part is Wallow by Coasts: [https://open.spotify.com/user/nihilismdun/playlist/0iqtApD1DN1dM4RpTsL93n?si=mfDmM3jRTUiVbgQyge1T1w ](https://open.spotify.com/user/nihilismdun/playlist/0iqtApD1DN1dM4RpTsL93n?si=mfDmM3jRTUiVbgQyge1T1w)

There’s a couple dollars clinking together softly in the pocket of Bucky’s jacket, rattling like they have to let the whole world know they’re there. Is that what desperation sounds like? Something is nagging at the loose ends of his memory, and there’s nothing he would rather do than tie them off, quiet melody so invasive but so far gone from the forefront of his head. He’s picking again, the skin of his cuticles barely there; pock marks littering his otherwise perfect skin. He wished she had freckles to blend in with the harsh purple-red marks sometimes. Peeled nails graze at the loose skin of his fingertips – he can’t tell the difference between normality and anxiety anymore.

Too by intertwined, he had come to realise that slick palms and nerve bitten skin was now a side effect of existing. Normality aside, nothing would cease the roiling liquid inside of him: bubbling with white heat, spilling over the sides of his stomach in an uncontrollable flood. Nothing would crush the feeling of vines wrapping almost lovingly around and throughout his ribs, seizing the air from his lungs – kind of like the firm clasp of a hand that could come across as menacing without even trying. He could see him – hop-skip of his step making Buck’s heart palpitate – in front of him. His converse skidded madly along the pavement, meeting, greeting with a spritely slap, and moving on forwards. Bucky’d always envied that about him: futurist and bold, he kept smirks in his eyes only, and stoicism lacing the rest of his face; a spitfire tongue he couldn’t help but abuse. Pure enigma.

Bucky was infatuated.

He didn’t even know his name.

The boy walking towards the 772-bus had fading denim coloured hair and kept his fingers tucked into his paint splattered pockets a lot. Bucky could see them though, the vague outlines tap, tap, tapping against his thigh. Reaching out to something no one else could see or hear. Head bouncing, Bucky knew he would be listening to something euphoric. His favourite, perhaps. Perfect music for a perfect boy. His backpack moved as he did, slapping his back, shaped like a shield and flashing red and blue with a star in the centre. Its sides bulged wider than this smaller boy’s shoulders, threatening to drag him backwards should he stop too abruptly.

He wondered idly what it would feel like to press his lips to the other boy’s neck, pulse thrumming like fire beneath his wind-chapped mouth. What would his blood taste like on Bucky’s tongue if he bit down just hard enough to make him moan something sinful? Where had that thought come from? He would probably never know.

A cornucopia of limbs struck the corner of his vision, celestial bodies converging into one. Flesh colliding with metal, the dulcet hues of midday splattered themselves in a sea of fumbling. Malevolent crunching the perfect juxtaposition, it acted as a cruel contradiction to the sweet simplicity of the day. He was on top of Bucky now, form moulding over his like a second skin. Amidst the dull ring in Bucky’s ears, he could make out a mourning gape on his face. Blood dribbling from the boy’s temple, he was unseeing, unthinking, unfeeling; the eternally denim haired enigma was frozen, pinned to Bucky’s body in an entirely ironic sort of perversion.

Panic stuffed itself into the small crevices of his brain, silent pleas of agony. Some kind of release. He was frozen himself now, protected from the car gone rogue, but pinned under the weight of the boy and shock – adrenaline blurring the edges of his vision, soft and marred, as if someone was blending out charcoal with a gentle, tender hand. The boy’s backpack had burst on impact, a shower of pages and colour as his paints seeped through material onto asphalt, coloured splinters of pencil haloing them both. An inhaler lay just out of reach of Bucky’s pinned down hand. After weeks of catching the bus together, the pang of realising he was learning more and more about this boy in the moments just after his death, made Bucky wretch and writhe while he laid. As tears gathered and slipped down his paling cheeks, trembling fingers reaching up, he slid the boy’s eyes closed, a show of respect to the perplexities of him: the enigma was merely sleeping now.

A morbid kind of infatuation settled in his stomach.

Bucky would never know his name.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to imagine Wallow is the song Steve was listening to before the incident - as if you needed any extra pain :')


End file.
